Essential Report

It’s the Economy … Stupid

Anti-Murdoch Movements

News Corp employee lashes Murdoch reporting of bushfires

A News Corp employee has slammed the organisation for spreading “climate change denial and lies” through “irresponsible” and “dangerous reporting” on Australia’s catastrophic bushfires.

“I have been severely impacted by the coverage of News Corp publications in relation to the fires, in particular the misinformation campaign that has tried to divert attention away from the real issue which is climate change to focus on arson (including misrepresenting facts),” Ms Townsend wrote.

I find it unconscionable to continue working for this company, knowing I am contributing to the spread of climate change denial and lies.”

Sky News

It is not a news organisation. It does not even pretend. Chris Smith is the commentator.

Cobargo – You must boycott Murdoch media if you have any self-respect.

A Self Inking Stamp

The Chaser will cancel your subscription

Are you sick of that crotchety old billionaire Rupert Murdoch siphoning off your hard earned cash each week? Are you tired of reading newspapers so biased, they make the Chaser seem like serious journalists by comparison? Want to just cancel your subscription to the Daily Telegraph that keeps clogging up your mailbox, but can’t be arsed waiting on the phone for three hours?

Well wait no more! For a limited time, we at Chaser.com.au are willing to bite the bullet for you and do the legwork. To apply for our free unsubscription service, just fill out the form below:

Queensland 2011 floods class action payout held up as water authorities move to appeal decision

The court ruled in favour of the negligence claim by thousands of property owners, finding the dam operators failed to follow their own manual and did not make enough room for heavy rainfall until it was too late, heightening flood levels and damaging more properties.

The Queensland Government had already opted not to appeal the decision.

In a statement, shareholding ministers Treasurer Jackie Trad and Natural Resources Minister Dr Anthony Lynham said the water authorities had independent boards and each had its own insurance policy to consider.

“The relevant insurance companies now have a legal right to determine their next steps,” they said.

“If a Ministerial Direction to Seqwater or Sunwater to not appeal the court decision could be given, it would not bind their insurers and it may compromise their insurance policies.”

They have called upon the insurers of Seqwater and Sunwater to rule out an appeal.

Meanwhile, in The Courier Mail, Deb Fecklington accuses the government of putting insurers above flood victims.

The News Churn Memory Hole: How the MSM Lies Even When Telling The Truth

The public’s total immersion in whatever sparkly clickbait drama gets served before them by the waiters and waitresses of corporate news media enables the narrative managers responsible for manipulating public thought to simply pace mainstream attention away from inconvenient news stories, even after reporting on those very news stories themselves the day before.

… This is all proof that simply getting information published isn’t enough. As important as whistleblowers, investigative journalists and leak publishing outlets like WikiLeaks are, by themselves they’re completely impotent, because all they do is reveal information while leaving the control of the dominant narrative in the hands of the establishment spinmeisters. There is no truth that could possibly be exposed that is so damning and so salacious that it couldn’t be manipulated away by establishment narrative control.

This doesn’t mean there’s no hope of ever awakening a critical mass to the fact that they live in a society which is ruled by oligarchs who benefit from keeping everyone else poor and powerless and profit from deceiving us into sending our children overseas to murder other people’s children. All it means is that we need to approach the problem with a very specific focus. It isn’t enough to simply expose the truth; we need to expose the truth while forcefully driving home the message that the media organizations which people rely on to form their entire understanding of the world have been deceiving them.

Yes, expose the truth, but do it while also saying “Look! See? This proves that the mainstream media have been lying to you this entire time! They lie to you about everything!” Drive this point home constantly, as often as possible. The propaganda machine is only able to manipulate people away from inconvenient truths when people trust it; if you can weaken their trust in the plutocratic media and the political class which regurgitates their narratives, you will cripple the machine’s ability to manipulate them in that way.

It’s not enough to simply expose the truth. You must also fully, repeatedly and consistently expose the ones who are telling lies.

This is simply a matter of an adjustment of focus. Far too many truth-tellers think it’s enough to keep their energy close to their chests and mildly speak truths as correctly as they can into the information ecosystem. This is like being in a cage fight and thinking it’s enough to simply have a good fighting stance. We are being attacked by an enemy who seeks to destroy our ability to understand and respond sensibly to our world, so we need to fight back. We need to be moving our feet and ducking and weaving and throwing strikes in combinations, not just standing there with a textbook-perfect fighting posture.

It’s not enough to be right, we’ve also got to win. We win by pouring our energy into sowing distrust in the establishment propaganda machine, mocking it, ridiculing it, showing everyone how absurdly phony it is, until everyone’s laughing at it and treating it with the same amount of deference that they give to flat-earthers. When we’ve accomplished that, that’s how we’ll know that we’ve won. And from there it will be possible to build a healthy world based on truth.

Corporate Philanthropy

Billionaires offer solutions

Leaving it up to billionaires is like putting foxes in charge of the hen house.

West Australian iron ore magnate Andrew Forrest has moved to clarify his stance on climate change after pointing to arson as a big contributor to this summer’s devastating fire season.

In Perth on Thursday, Mr Forrest and wife Nicola announced their philanthropic arm, the Minderoo Foundation, would donate $70 million towards relief efforts and to building the nation’s long-term resilience to bushfires.

At a press conference, Mr Forrest said that, while he did not want to get political, global warming was part of the reason for the devastation but “the biggest part” was arsonists.

In a statement issued later in the day, Mr Forrest said he “unequivocally” believed climate change was real and he accepted the warming of our planet was a “primary cause of the catastrophic events”.

Of the Forrests’ $70 million gift, $10 million will be used for immediate bushfire relief and $10 million will go towards mobilising about 1250 specialist volunteers from tradies to health professionals from WA.

The remaining $50 million will go towards a $500 million project gathering experts to develop a “globally relevant national blueprint” for fire and disaster resilience, including new approaches to mitigate bushfires.

From the Minderoo website … Minderoo Foundation will also invest in building long term resilience by convening leading experts to develop a globally relevant national blueprint for fire and disaster resilience. With the support of leading international non-profit environmental organisation Conservation International, these efforts will draw on existing research and expertise in Australia and overseas and accelerate innovation to develop new approaches to mitigate bushfires.

Sounds like the typical BS that “tech and innovation will lead to a win-win solution”.

Some solutions need to be win lose. Rich pay more tax. Some mining companies should stop mining. It’s hard to imagine that a body funded by rich mining companies will recommend those solutions.

Philanthropy deflects poor from going after the rich. Support for woke causes does the same thing for less cost.

We are putting arsonists in charge of firefighting.

Wake up Australia. I was unfortunately not surprised by the level of support for Gina Rhinehart when she was dissed for not revealing any donations.

A list of bushfire donors

Donor

Amount

Andrew and Nicola Forrest

$70m

Celeste Barber Facebook fundraiser

$49m

Paul Ramsay Foundation

$30m

Crown, Packer family

$5m

NAB

$5m

BHP

$2m

Westpac

$1.5m

Coles

$4m ($1m cash, $3m gift cards)

Woolworths

$1.5m ($1m goods, $500k cash)

Commonwealth Bank (up from $1m)

$9m

Leonardo DiCaprio’s Earth Alliance

$US3m ($4.3m)

ANZ

$1m

Rio Tinto

$1m

Orica

$1m

Pratt Foundation

$1m

Qantas

$1m

John and Pauline Gandel

$1m

Sir Elton John

$1m

Chris Hemsworth

$1m

Atlassian Foundation

$1m

Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar

$1m

Shane Warne fundraiser (baggie green cap)

$1m+

Metallica

$750,000

Kylie and Dannii Minogue

$500,000

Justin Hemmes

$500,000

Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban

$500,000

Pink

$500,000

Lewis Hamilton

$500,000

Canva

$500,000

Russell Crowe’s Rabbitohs cap auction

$500,000+

Master Builders Australia

$150,000

Law firm Arnold Bloch Leibler

$100,000

All up it comes to around 200m.

An Elizabeth Warren Wealth-tax imposed on wealthy Australians would bring in 8.34b every year!